


Proof that Regina Mills has a heart

by thisisamadhouse



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Marvel Universe AU - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 18:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisamadhouse/pseuds/thisisamadhouse
Summary: She is a reclusive, genius billionaire scientist kidnapped in a conflict zone, he is the doctor wo saves her life. Together they will fight to return to their sons, their lives, and maybe find something more along the way.





	Proof that Regina Mills has a heart

**Author's Note:**

> I originally got the idea during the Movie Week and created a poster and a moodboard, but I didn't have time to go into the story. Now for the OQ prompt party I found a perfect excuse. Unbetaed, all mistakes are mine.
> 
> Prompt 34 One of them gets injured and the other has to take care of them.  
> & 117 OQ modern world AU with no magic

There are many defining moments in someone’s life, moments that upon remembering them makes one say that there was a ‘before’ and a ‘after’, moments that make or break you. Like marrying the person you love more than anything, the birth of a child, losing a spouse, a parent… being abducted while travelling with a military convoy through a conflict zone. 

As Regina Mills, the genius, reclusive billionaire scientist is about to find out as she regains consciousness, some events are so life-altering that it doesn’t just turn the course of your existence on its axis, but it also changes the way you function, your heart, your very purpose, and nothing that she went through until that point prepared her for it.

* * *

Voices, so many voices around her, harsh voices saying words that she doesn’t understand, that make her frown, and a softer, gentler one, that she doesn’t recognize but which whispers soothing words, calming words, and she clings to it like a lifeline.

“It’s alright, Milady, they’re gone, they won’t hurt you. Come on, open your eyes, I know you can do it. I saw that little scowl, I know that you can hear me. Come on,” the stranger encourages.

Regina really wants to, but her eyelids are so heavy, her whole body feels strange, wrong, like she can’t feel it properly, and yet she is pretty sure that there is a hand holding hers. She focuses on that sensation, tries to squeeze the warm fingers.

“That’s it! I knew that you were a fighter,” he exclaims as he feels the pressure tightening around his hand. “Come on, almost there, open your eyes now.”

The effort that it demands is almost inhuman, at least that’s how it feels to Regina as she pries her eyelids open, bracing herself for a hospital’s bright, white lights. She frowns when, instead, she encounters a blurry face. She blinks slowly once, then twice, hoping to clear her vision, and it finally works on the third try. The man is leaning over her, smiling warmly, he is handsome, some functioning part of her brain notices, though his beard and hair could use a trim, and his eyes must be the brightest baby blues that she has ever encountered.

“There you are,” he says, still in that calm, soothing tone, low enough not to hurt her suddenly aching head.

She opens her mouth to talk, but realises it’s a bad idea when the dryness of her throat sends her coughing.

“Easy, easy,” he says, slipping an arm beneath her back to raise her up, his other hand holding a cup of water that he brings to her parched lips. “Small sips,” he tells her, and she listens.

The sensation of relief as that first sip freshens her mouth, her throat, is unlike anything she has ever known before.

When she has had her fill, he leans back against a pillow she didn’t notice him place behind her.

“Let’s try again, shall we?” He suggests, his smile bordering on a grin as she nods.

So many questions that she wants, and needs, to ask, that she has to close her eyes again to concentrate on only forming one.

“Who are you?” There, a start, simple, straight-forward, short. She barely recognizes her voice, as broken and rough as it is.

“My name is Robin Locksley,” he answers. “I’m your doctor,” there is something in the way he says it, the way he looks around the room, some weird mix of defeat and desperation that Regina just doesn’t feel strong enough to investigate just then.

“Where are we?” She wonders then, another simple question, but this time the response is slower to come, more hesitant.

“What do you remember?” He asks instead, and it doesn’t bode well, she thinks.

She inhales deeply, her eyes shutting once more as she racks her brain to access her memories. She draws a blank at first, but then gasps as the images flood her mind. The award ceremony in Las Vegas, her sister Zelena, gambling while Regina had to go up on the stage alone, the phone call the next morning from her friend Mallory, a Colonel in the Army, as she asked her where Zelena was, the last minute rearrangement as it became clear that Zelena was too hungover to board the plane and make the presentation to the military representatives that were interested in their latest project, the convoy leaving the site after their successful show, and Regina climbing in the car driven by a woman who had served with her late husband Daniel, the shots fired at them, soldiers dying all around her as they tried to protect her, and the missile exploding near her as she tried to escape the car, bearing the name of her company.   

She is hyperventilating at this point, and Robin is there, clutching her hand. “Look at me, Regina, look at me, you need to breathe.”

Her eyes flies open and latch onto his. “That’s right, look at me, take a deep, slow breath for me,” it is a shuddering one, but the next one is less so, and the one after that even less. 

Little by little, he coaxes her into one deep breath after the other, until the panic attack subsides. She hasn’t had one in years, not since she was a young widow with a baby who would never remember his father. God, Henry! She had entrusted her son to his grandfather, it was supposed to be a short trip after all, and now here she is, in a cave, she guesses as she looks around for the first time, letting go of Robin’s eyes, but not of his hand.

“There was an explosion,” she says, finally, turning back to him.

He nods. “Yes, you were gravely injured by shrapnels, and I did everything I could with the equipment I had,” he pauses. “It was a last ditch attempt really. If we had been in a proper operating theatre I could have done this the right way, but the situation being what it is…” He trails off, and a feeling of dread settles in her gut.

“What… what did you have to do?” She stammers, crushing his hand with hers as he swallows heavily.

“It’s best if I show you,” he whispers. “May I?” He asks for permission to lower the sheet covering her, and she nods, feeling dizzy as she discerns for the first time the cables connected to her chest. “Keep breathing, please,” he implores, and she forces herself to, until she sees the device embedded beneath her sternum. She thinks she is going to pass out, as vague flashes come back to her, of hands holding her down, of men all around her shouting over her cries of pain, of Robin holding pliers as he removed bits of metal from her body until they finally knocked her out.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Robin repeats. “But it was the only thing I could do to prevent the shrapnel from entering your heart, it is too big to remove without damage. Please Regina, breathe, you can’t exert yourself too much.”

It takes all of her willpower, but she manages to overcome the fright the sight caused her. She reverts to her training as an engineer and a scientist to study the device and the battery linked to it, and the process helps her focus.

“An electromagnet,” she says, and Robin nods. “I would not have expected it from a surgeon.”

He smiles sadly at that. “I can’t take all the credit. My wife was an engineer, she taught me a few things while we were on our missions with Doctors Without Borders.”

She raises her eyebrows in surprise. “That sounds like quite the story.”

It makes Robin positively beam. “Oh believe me, it is. Though I would have wished for a happier ending,” he sobers.

“There is nothing worse than losing the person you thought you would spend the rest of your life with,” Regina murmurs.

“Truer words, Milady,” he says, squeezing her hand comfortingly.

“It’s Regina. I think you have seen enough of me, inside and out, to put us on a first name basis,” she replies.

“Oh, I know who you are! Who doesn’t? They certainly do,” he tells her.

“Who are they exactly? What do they want?”

“Terrorists, fanatics, murderers. Dangerous people who want to be heard, to spread their ideas. You are their biggest catch. I gather that they want a ransom,” he answers, his jaw clenching, a shadow passing over his eyes.

“How did you find yourself here?”

“I was in the area with DWB, a friend asked for my help, they were short several doctors, especially those who know some of the languages spoken here. I owed him a favour, so I accepted. My son’s grandparents had been begging me to spend more time with him, and I thought that it would be the right time, before he starts primary school in September,” he is lost in his recollection, and Regina’s heart clenches at the mention of the boy waiting for him at home, terrified like hers must be. “I was only supposed to stay for another week, but one night we heard screams and shots fired in the village. Our guards went to investigate, but they never returned. My friend John and I, we sent all of those we could out back towards the mountains where they would be harder to find, and we went to check on our most critical patients. They stormed into our camp, shouting, we could barely understand them, but then we gathered that they needed a doctor for one of their injured leader. John volunteered himself, but he is…” he halts, tears in his eyes, and gulps. “...was. He was so tall and massive that it scared them. They shot him down right there, even though he wanted to help them. I thought I was next, but I was their only option, so they took me, and I have been here ever since.”

Regina swallows back her own tears before asking how long it’s been.

“Two months, as of yesterday,” he answers, and she shakes her head in disbelief. How is it possible that no one has found him? 

He seems to guess what she is thinking. “They know this area extremely well and they know how to hide. People are too scared to talk.”

“Well, I have friends too, in high places, and an annoying sister who can pester anyone into doing what she wants. They won’t give up until they find us,” Regina assures, trying to convey the confidence of the smart businesswoman she had to become.

Robin smirks. “Ah, the legendary Zelena Mills, socialite extraordinaire. Given her reputation, I am inclined to believe you.”

Regina snorts. “Well she is notorious, but when it comes to family, I don’t know anyone more loyal. Without her and our father, I don’t know what I would have done after…” Those pesky tears are back, as they usually are when she thinks about losing Daniel, and how long it took for her to pull herself together for her son’s sake.

“I understand all too well,” Robin says softly. “But it seems you did a brilliant job with your boy, despite the circumstances.”

She is confused by this statement. Henry is kept out of the media that scrutinize her and her sister so closely, she has sued enough newspapers and TV channels to ensure that. “You know my son?”

Robin nods. “I live in New York, my Roland is part of your Henry’s reading program. He worships him, to be quite honest.”

Regina smiles proudly. She is still not sure how a soldier and a scientist made an aspiring writer, especially one who, from such a young age, has always wanted to give back to the community. They have financed after school programs to tutor struggling students, created grants and scholarships to spot young talents in poor neighbourhoods to give them their best chance, in Henry’s name. The reading program is his pride and joy though: every week he goes into a different library and sits beside an author as they read an excerpt of their latest book, and then discuss how they started writing, how they are inspired, anything and everything really. A whole evening where people of all ages and background gather and exchange about the books that changed their lives, that allow them to escape, that have them yearning for more. Regina tries to go as often as she can, keeping to the shadows as she watches her son at work, and it is so obvious that he is a natural, that he found his vocation.

She imagines a young boy with Robin’s dimples, hanging onto Henry’s every word, both of them having already lost a parent, both of them missing the other, and she refuses to believe that this is the end of the road.

“I will get you, get  _ us _ , out of here and back to our sons, if it is the last I do,” she vows, looking straight into his eyes, conveying all the strength that years of hardships have given her.

Now, all she needs is a plan.  


End file.
